Big Questions: Lotte Hill on the Biggest Opportunities For Brands in 2025

In our first Big Questions interview of the year, we spoke with Lotte Hill, PMG’s Head of Media in the UK, to gain her insights into the state of the industry. With over a decade of experience in media planning and buying, Lotte specialises in driving brand growth through integrated, full-funnel campaigns for some of the world’s leading brands. As a media leader at PMG, Lotte focuses on delivering performance, maximising efficiency, and leading innovation for PMG brands across industries.

One of the biggest challenges for marketers right now is balancing short-term and long-term objectives. Many brands face pressure to demonstrate immediate ROI, often prioritising performance-driven campaigns that deliver quick results but neglecting the brand-building activations that are essential for long-term equity and consumer loyalty. Rising platform costs only amplify this pressure. 

Another challenge is navigating a fragmented media landscape. Delivering cohesive campaigns across different touchpoints while ensuring consistency, tailored messaging, and creative for each channel is a complex task that can yield significant rewards. Combined with the ongoing “attention crisis,” where consumers are constantly bombarded with messages, breaking through this noise demands exceptional creativity and strategic thinking.

However, these challenges also present opportunities. The greatest opportunity for marketers in 2025 lies in creating relevant and highly engaging content supported by a strong communications framework. Ads that resonate personally or culturally are much more likely to capture attention and leave a lasting impression, which is crucial in an era of shrinking attention spans. By delivering such content across the right touchpoints while aligning with both performance and brand-building objectives, marketers can ultimately foster better connections with their audience and achieve meaningful growth.

Consumers today expect hyper-personalised experiences, and they often ignore generic messaging. They seek content and offers that feel uniquely relevant to them, no matter where they are. This expectation extends beyond engaging online content to offline experiences, such as experiential pop-ups designed to surprise and delight.

The rise of conscious consumption—where many consumers prioritise quality over quantity—has also changed expectations. To connect with this emerging mindset, marketers need to do more than push volume strategies; they must better highlight their core values and ethics.

Ultimately, social proof and community influence remain crucial in shaping consumer behavior. User-generated content and trusted influencers remain pivotal in consumers’ decision-making processes, offering marketers a foundation to build trust and drive engagement.

Marketing strategies often neglect to allocate a dedicated budget for acquiring new customers. While this may not seem revolutionary, it is one of the most overlooked and underutilised methods for driving significant impact. Consistently targeting new customers enables brands to capture untapped audiences and avoid becoming too dependent on a dwindling pool of existing customers. This approach also fosters innovation by encouraging marketers to stay creative and adaptable, exploring new channels, messages, and formats. Without a steady influx of new customers, brands risk reaching a growth plateau and becoming stagnant.

As marketers plan for the year ahead, siphoning a portion of the annual budget specifically for engaging audiences with no prior interaction is essential. Begin by identifying these audiences by answering questions like, “Where are they spending their time, both online and offline?” Then, create a test-and-learn plan to experiment with new channels and methods to connect with them. At this stage, remember to focus on education; these audiences won’t know who you are or why your brand matters. It’s important to communicate your value proposition and unique selling points clearly. Monitor metrics such as reach, frequency, and engagement without measuring in isolation. Conduct brand lift studies and assess overall customer acquisition cost and lifetime value to understand how these efforts contribute to sustained growth. 2025 is the year to embrace diversification and lessen reliance on in-market audiences. Fear of the unknown will only hinder brands' progress.

To meet the growing demand for personalisation, marketers must utilise data, technology, and customer-focused strategies to deliver tailored experiences at scale. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, first-party data is more essential than ever. Implement transparent data collection strategies, such as loyalty programmes and surveys, if you haven’t done so already, to ensure customers understand the value of sharing their information. Dynamic audience segmentation allows marketers to deliver targeted campaigns that adapt to consumer interactions.

Personalised content, such as tailored emails, dynamic website experiences, and bespoke product recommendations, can boost engagement and conversion rates by directly addressing individual needs. Ultimately, this all comes back to relevance and the importance of prioritising the audience’s needs.

A brand I personally admire is TALA. First, its female founder, Grace Beverley, has truly disrupted the activewear market by combining sustainability, affordability, and style, outperforming competitors in an already saturated and overpriced industry. Since its last fundraising round three years ago, TALA has seen a tenfold increase in monthly revenue. Just this year, it secured a £5 million funding boost to support the brand’s international expansion into the U.S. This is no small feat, especially considering that only 2% of venture capital funding in the U.K. goes to women-founded businesses.

TALA is refreshingly transparent about its practices and garment origins. There is no greenwashing or use of sustainability as a marketing gimmick. The brand also champions inclusivity, offering a wide range of sizes and featuring diverse models in its campaigns. As a result, TALA has cultivated a loyal community of customers who resonate with its mission and values. Through social media and user-generated content, the brand has created a sense of belonging, making customers feel like active participants in its journey. TALA exemplifies how purpose-driven businesses can disrupt industries while remaining authentic and customer-focused.